


In a Flash

by SilverServerError



Series: Monster on the Mountain [9]
Category: Tsubasa: Reservoir Chronicle
Genre: Dragon/Phoenix AU, Kurofai Week 2018 Day Seven Explosion, M/M, Monster on the Mountain, NSFN
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-11
Updated: 2018-11-11
Packaged: 2019-08-22 07:01:40
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,015
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16593113
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SilverServerError/pseuds/SilverServerError
Summary: The humans have an understanding of fire all their own.-A bonus scene of Kurogane and Fai from early in their companionship.





	In a Flash

It hits like a physical blow. 

 

A concussion through the air that passes through Fai’s body and makes his heart skip a beat. The noise isn’t the loudest he’s ever heard, but it’s raw and crude like a child drawing their first charcol lines in the earth. 

 

He gasps, a heat finding its way to confront every last crevice of his lungs. Unsure until the exhale if the tender tissue will survive it.    
  
It does, though there is an acrid smell left behind. 

 

As do his eyes. 

 

As does his skin. 

 

As does the woman standing at his side. 

 

“You do this for  _ fun _ ?” Fai asks, swallowing away the residue of smoke left in his mouth. 

 

“She’d probably do it every day if she could get away with it.”  

 

Fai glances back as Souma speaks, her dark skin catching every torch until she too seems to glow. She is collected as ever. The serenity found in her confidence easily mistaken for stoicism. But her gaze is like a jaguar stalking its prey as it traces over the nape of her queen’s neck. 

 

“You only fire the cannons on holidays?” 

 

“On the anniversary.” She watches the fire blooming over the crowd of her cheering people and Fai sees an expression he knows well, but isn’t used to seeing on human features. He’s not sure how this reign will play out, but he has a few troubling suspicions.  

 

“Of your coronation, my queen?” She’s told him he doesn’t need to keep calling her that. He doesn’t believe it for a second. They may both wear ancient gold, but hers is a crown and his is shackles.  

 

“No.” Amaterasu says, twirling the punk between her fingers, the burning tip leaving arches of light on Fai’s vision. “Of the eruption.” There is too much glee in her voice, and even on a night so hot he must wear the thinnest of linens, he feels a sudden chill. “Of the day the world ended.” She lowers her flame to the next fuse, and Fai watches her watch it burn down in anticipation. “And the new one began.” 

  
  


* * *

 

“Kuro! Kuro I-” 

 

He heard Fai approaching long before the light from the archway cast his silhouette across the raw obsidian wall. Long slender neck made even longer by the angle of the shadow. A sharp beak. Legs that disappeared into the floor. 

 

“I’m sorry. I didn’t realize.” 

 

Kurogane lowers his chin, crimson eyes darting from one place to the next with impossible reptilian speed as he thinks. 

 

“If I’d have know… I should have been here for you.” Fai approaches him and he feels the light pressure of a talon resting against his shoulder. “I  _ am  _ here for you.” 

 

“I don’t know why they see it as cause for celebration.” 

 

He feels Fai’s head nuzzle up against his jaw in tender comfort and begrudgingly closes his eyes, relaxing a fraction. “Humans can react in the strangest of ways,” Fai tells him softly, a gentle coo at his ear as the bird half perches on his shoulder, wing doing its best to cover his other side. “It’s not up to us to try and understand their minds.” 

 

“This used to be my horde,” Kurogane says, his throat working like it’s difficult to say the words. Like they’ve never been said out loud before. He reaches a front foot up to the black stone and traces old claw marks. “Or at least, the main of it. Everything I had known as a hatchling. Almost everything I’d built or recieved as tribute.” He takes his foot away, and dips the side of his head to nuzzle against his phoenix, eyes still not leaving the wall. “It’s still probably under there. Under the solid stone. Destroyed. But there.” 

 

A vein of gold and gemstones, perhaps to be found again someday. But not in this age or even the next. 

 

“You tried to get in?” 

 

Kurogane just stared at the wall, solid black rock except where it took on the impression of the cave wall it had come up against. The claws that had scrapped it back. The traces of wing or tail impression that could have have someday held Kurogane’s fossil if he’d had a little less resiliance. 

 

“Kuro?”    
  
“I had to dig my way out.” 

 

Kurogane isn’t expecting the reflexive glance Fai gives his front feet but he pulls them back all the same. Fai starts to speaks then stops, looking away. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to…” 

 

Kurogane sighs, turning to huff smoke against Fai’s neck before he moves his claws back out and turns to let the light from the hall shine on them. Fai climbs off his back to get a shy look. 

 

“Are you sure?” 

 

Kurogane growls but directs it at nowhere in particular. Fai knows this behavior well enough by now to see it as vulnerability and not aggression. 

 

“I’ve shed since then,” Kurogane tells him, trying to act as if this is boring, prosaic information. “A few of the claw beds are still scarred but everything else is healed.” 

 

“But your knuckles get sore when the seasons change, don’t they?” 

 

Kurogane looked at him with wide eyes, studying Fai with an intensity. His expressions could be harder to read in this form but the feathers always started standing on end when his emotions were getting the better of him. 

 

“How do you know that?” 

 

Fai studied the floor. His own shadowed toes. Then he circled Kurogane to tuck himself under his wing, looking back at Kurogane from behind. “Do you want to go back?” He lowered his head until it rested against his back. “Or should we stay a while longer?”

 

Kurogane adjusted his wing, coving Fai’s body a little more snuggly. “This darkness is heavy. You may go back if you wish. I will find you when I sleep.” 

 

“I wish to stay where you want me, Kurogane.” 

 

He felt a keen ache in his chest, and lay his head back, snout just tucked under his bird’s chin. “The let us keep vigil, for this night at least.”  

 


End file.
